Advent Benediction of Five and Two

image“How many loaves do you have?” he asked. “Go and see".”

When they found out, they said, “Five—and two fish.” (Mark 6:38)

 

Provision to Bless Others

God Bless you brothers and sister of the Lord Jesus Christ.

 

May you look into you hands and know the fullness of His provision.

Where others see five tiny loaves, barely enough for one’s meal,

may you opened eyes see baskets overflowing with your daily bread,

as well as bread for others.

 

May you raise the two tiny fish from your basket up to Heaven

and give thanks to the Father who supplies just what you need today.

 

Be blessed by the God of provision,

who gives to you this day

so that you need not worry for tomorrow.

 

Amen

 

The Lord bless you and keep you.

image the Justified Sinner

Discovering “A Praying Life” by Paul Miller

imageA Praying Life arrived in my mailbox unbidden, but divinely well timed. In a box of books sent from NavPress in satisfaction of an old subscription to their discipleship journal that had ceased publication, Miller’s book was on the bottom of the stack and unremarkable in its cover art. The gifts were distributed among friends and family, but I placed this book on the shelf to be read at some undetermined date. It wasn’t to be a long wait however, as something moved me to insert this into my reading rotation immediately. I’m very glad I did.

Paul Miller’s A Praying Life is simply a prayer guide for the majority of the modern church, most of whom do not have a regular time of communion with God. It is not a program, a method or a theological dissertation. Instead, Miller’s approach is to aimed square at the heart of the Christ follower who has shied away from prayer because he believes that it is too hard or time consuming. He speaks from the heart of a harried, burdened Christian who also stumbles and teaches the reader that prayer is not simply an appointment to be kept. It is a way of life that can become as natural as breathing.

Many in the Christian community keep themselves from prayer because they see the challenges as insurmountable. The literature on prayer is wide and deep, and depending on the books that you select, it is easy to become discouraged and turn away from the practice. Picking up Bounds, you look at your life and wonder how you would find hours per day to pray. Hybels sets out a formula (ACTS) that is perfect for some but constraining for others who attempt to steer the thoughts of their heart into the framework instead of pouring them out to God. Foster gives us 21 types of prayers, all biblical and wonderful but a challenge for the Christian to remember and apply on a daily basis. Each of the authors has enriched my life, but I find it difficult to recommend them to the majority of Christians I come in contact with.

Miller takes a different approach to the privilege of prayer. He begins our discipleship in the art of prayer by turning us back to our childhood and encouraging us to speak to our heavenly Father in the same, open, unguarded fashion we once spoke to our earthly fathers. We didn’t worry about form and just told him what was on our minds. Why would God be any different? Beginning in this way we learn to crave the time with Him, worrying less about content and simply develop a comfort in the moments spent together. Without this foundation, Christians find it difficult to develop a more mature approach to prayer.

Prayer is hard, as is life as a child of God. Our Father says no, He has periods of silence that stretch for months on end and He can call us to obedience in ways that we wrestle against in resentment. It is easy for us to remember the chapters of the Bible in which prayer is immediately answered in a positive way, yet we are quick to forget the dark night in Gethsemane where the Lord cried out for His Father to take the cup from in but received a no in response. By intertwining experiences from his own life, Miller helps us to get over this hurdle that stops many Christians in their attempts to build a life of prayer. He shows that answers may not come, they may be no or that the answer may be several years separated from the supplication. The foundation that he built in the initial pages supports the broken heart of those disappointments and long winters of wait.

Whether you posses shelves of books on prayer or are seeking a new start, A Praying Life is an outstanding book to include in your library. You will read it once and be immediately moved to read it again at a slower pace, seeing and considering the parallels between your own life and that of Mr. Miller’s. This is prayer guide that should become a part of many church discipleship programs.

Watching the Skies–First Sunday of Advent 2010

imageWhen these things begin to take place, stand up and lift up your heads, because your redemption is drawing near. (Lk 21:28)

Without the calendar, and especially the Church calendar, we would be hard pressed to know the beginning of Advent. As the commercialization of Christmas has increased, the start of the season has become an artificial demarcation. The start of the ‘holiday season’ creeps further back on the pages of the calendar, with some outlets beginning to display the colors and icons of Christmas around the end of October. Thanksgiving becomes a speed-bump in the path of the gift-rush steamroller.

These false signs have an effect on us. Few are moved to shop anymore simply by the appearance of red and green replacing the oranges, auburns and browns of autumn. Fewer still see these signs as a welcome reminder of the joy of Christmas. Our senses are dulled by the barrage, hardened because of the attempted to deceit,  temporarily blinded by the fast-cut commercials and blinking LED reindeer noses.

Advent is the Church’s reminder of the Kingdom that came and makes it dwelling amongst us. Our reading for this year comes first from Saint Luke. The doctor records the Lord’s insistence that we be ever watchful for signs of the kingdom. He gave the analogy of the trees, say “Look at the fig tree and all the trees. When they sprout leaves, you can see for yourselves and know that summer is near.” (vv 29b-30) Likewise, He explained, if we are watchful and knowledgeable about the signs of an impending change in the season of our relationship with Him, we will not be caught unaware.

The world threatens to dull our sensitivity to the signs of the Kingdom. Whether it be God speaking to us through another person, a book or the movement of the leaves in the trees, the noise and busyness of our lives can drown out that quiet voice. Other signs are hidden from us as our vision tires from the constant stream of images we take in, good and bad. Without seeing the signs, our ability to raise our hands in celebration is limited.

Let us quiet our celebration this year. Spend some time looking into the flickering Advent flame rather than the Christmas lights. Reread favorite Scriptures and listen for the voice of God. When we see and hear clearly, our chances of noticing the signs of the Kingdom around us increase tenfold. Seek out and praise the Lord for the intimacy of His presence in your life.

 

Grace and peace to you.

image Per Ola Wilberg

All That Needs To Be Said

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Psalm 100

A psalm. For giving thanks.

 

Shout for joy to the Lord, all the earth.

Worship the Lord with gladness; come before Him with joyful songs.

Know that the Lord is God.

It is He who made us, and we are his; we are His people, the sheep of his pasture.

 

Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise;

give thanks to Him and praise His name.

For the Lord is good and his love endures forever;

His faithfulness continues through all generations.

 

Bless and be blessed.

Psalm 90–Establish the Work of Our Hands

imageMake us glad for as many days as you have afflicted us. (Ps 90:15)

People with unrealistic expectations or an outlook that is unfettered by the reality of scriptures portray a life that is without difficulty. In their view, the seventy, eighty or ninety years of life we are given is to be one great, long carnival of corn dogs and tilt-a-whirls. Adventure and sensual pleasures day after day without any hint of trouble shadowing the fun. Your best life now is not being lived right if adversity shows its face.

On the other hand, those of us with a more grounded view of life know that trouble and satisfaction go hand in hand in this life. We live in a fallen world in which sin has woven its way into the very fabric of life, leaving nothing untouched. The psalmist expresses this reality in Psalm 90, contrasting the brevity of life with the ongoing struggle that seems to mark it. Why God, he exclaims, why can’t you provide a little more balance of pleasure to pain to lessen the agony?

This psalm must be read in tandem with its brother, Psalm 91. They are two sides of the same coin. One vents a frustration with ongoing anxiety, the other expresses the knowledge that security is found only in the Lord. The balance between the good and bad of life is centered in the trust that the God of the universe has everything well in hand. Any momentary pleasures or travail are simply a part of His unfolding plan. Difficult to accept in the midst of one and seemingly too brief in the other, when we center our being in Him, we trust that each has its purpose in the plan.

Grace and peace to you.

 

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Spiritual Rhythm by Mark Buchanan

imageIn the opening pages of Spiritual Rhythm, Pastor Mark Buchanan rehearses with us of the closing verses of Psalm 88. The closing verse especially–“the darkness is my closest friend.”—speaks to a spiritual darkness nearly as black as the afternoon at Golgotha. All that the psalmist had, or thought he had, is gone, and he cries to the darkness to explain why God has abandoned him here. Most Christians can identify with the bleakness evoked in that scripture, of knowing that moment when life has crashed down and crushed our souls. As our fingers weakly reach from the rubble for the hand of the Father, none is found. We find ourselves in a season of winter.

Buchanan echoes a well known theme similar to the conclusion drawn by the author of Ecclesiastes, that our lives can be viewed as a cycle of seasons. Just as our moods and behaviors differ from season to season as the weather changes, so also should our spiritual lives mirror the life-season we find ourselves in. An important distinction that the Pastor draws in the analogy is a difference in the length of the seasons. According to the calendar winter will last precisely 90 days; a spiritual winter may last an achingly long time or pass in a few weeks. This variability demands that we prepare for the eventuality of a sudden transition into a new season before it arrives.

Spiritual Rhythm combines a pastoral sensitivity aimed at helping the believer identify the spiritual cycles and a teacher’s heart for training the disciple. In the same way that we anticipate the season to follow our present experience and prepare for it, Buchanan suggests that our spiritual disciplines should prepare for us the coming seasonal transition. Without this preparation, he says, we may find ourselves cursing the darkness rather than being able to thank God for it.

Pastor Buchanan engages the reader in the book as he has in his previous volumes. With a pastoral sensitivity and an ear for the proper personal interlude, Mark speaks to the reader as closely as your own pastor would and in a way that only a trusted associate can. He does not speak from the lofty pulpit of theological precept. Rather, he leads us to search the scriptures to find the nuggets that may not preach well but become the pearls that we jot in our journals or remember long after the book is returned to the shelf. Men will be particularly touched by the volume as Buchanan willingly visits and revisits the heart-rending pain of the lost of his friend and co-pastor Carol, expressing his pain and sorrow with complete abandon that many men strive to hide beneath layers of false machismo. A man who is especially observant will also never forget the name Abishai again.

Spiritual Rhythm is a volume that reads fast, but is one that you will want to linger on and savor. The temptation will be strong to turn this into a small group curriculum, but this material and the spiritual exercises lend themselves more to personal practice. Unless all of the members of a cell found themselves in the same spiritual season at the same time, the needs of all of the individuals would more often than not find themselves in conflict. Spend time with this book on your own and align your actions to your current season. Never again will you be anxious at an approaching transition.

I’m grateful to Zondervan who graciously provided this copy for review.

Psalm 89–Love and Faithfulness Go Before You

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O Lord, where is your former great love, which in your faithfulness you swore to David? (Ps 89:50)

Like so many of psalms we have read before this entry, we could easily substitute our own name in place of the king’s. When we enter a season of spiritual winter, or even encounter travail in the otherwise sunny seasons, our tendency is look upward and outward rather than inward, in order to comprehend the perceived lack of love from the Father. Cries of “why are You doing this to me?” fill our prayers and thoughts. We labor to align the ‘promises’ of our faith with dark chasms that we suddenly have to cross. We Christians are prone to disillusionment in far greater percentage than the unbelieving souls around us. 

Perhaps, this is because we have not developed a mature understanding of the promises of God.

Psalm 89 turns on verse 38. After rehearsing the greatness of God and reciting the promises of the covenant made with David, the psalmist points a finger at the sky and speaks aloud his accusations.

But you have reject, you have spurned, you have been very angry with your anointed one.

You have renounced the covenant with your servant and have defiled his crown in the dust. (vv 38-39)

The temerity of the final accusation is fascinating and telling. The crown that God has ‘defiled’ was formed, shaped, adorned, fitted and assigned by Him! It is His crown, only temporarily assigned to a mortal creature and conditionally, at that. The poet fails to include the countless failures and apostasies that God has endured within the kingdom he promised his love to. His expectation is wholly out of line with the covenant agreement and yet, he does not hesitate to ponder out loud why God has ‘failed’ to uphold his end of the bargain.

We will rarely know what greater good our seasons of struggle are intended to for. Our first thoughts should turn inward toward our own sin and breaches of love with God. Is this a time of discipline that is meant for correction? Be a good student and allow the Tutor to reform your heart. If the spirit does not bring sin to mind, search the Scriptures and find all those who struggled through similar circumstances. Their roles, however minor, in the greater span of the Kingdom give us hope that our pain is not wasted. God does and will turn all things for good. Count on that before raising your next accusation to the sky.

 

Grace and peace to you.

image Krystn Palmer

Psalm 88–The Darkness is My Closest Friend

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Your wrath has swept over me; your terrors have destroyed me.

All day long they surround me like a flood; they have completely engulfed me.

You have taken my companions and loved one from me;

the darkness is my closest friend. (Ps 88: 16-18)

The psalter contains numerous pleas for restoration, salvation and redemption but none as bleak as this. The psalmist lives a life, as it were, knowing only the dark side of God’s presence. Unlike Job who once knew a life of blessing, the psalmist here describes a life of pain and affliction from birth to the day he pens this scroll. The tragedy of his life is of such a degree that it is finally responsible for driving away even his loved ones and companions as he lives with one foot constantly at the edge of the grave.

The casual bible reader will quickly sift through these verses, reading forward to find more uplifting passages, but this would be a mistake.

Individual purpose is never easy to discern with our limited mindset. Why God would burden one of his beloved with such difficulty without respite is beyond our ability understand. And yet, we are called by the scriptures to endure, and even find joy in our travail, trusting that our pain and the darkness we inhabit has a larger purpose in His plan. Our response often echoes the despair that rings in these verses.

But I cry to you for help, O Lord; in the morning my prayer comes before you. 

Why, O Lord, do you reject me and hide your face from me? (vv 13-14)

This is a familiar frustration, that of the prayer that does not reach its audience. We plead and cry out but silence and pain are the only responses we receive. The Tempter whispers in our ear to surrender, to give up the belief that relief is at hand and to curse the One who visits it upon us. We come close, but we cannot do it. God will redeem this pain and bring light to this darkness. It may not be until we have left this plane, but it will occur. So we continue, like the psalmist, to raise our voice…

I call to you, O Lord, every day; I spread out my hands to you. (v9b)

 

Grace and peace to you.

image Ozan Ozan

Psalm 87–I Will Record Rahab and Babylon as Acknowledging Me

imageHe has set his foundation on the holy mountain;

the Lord loves the gates of Zion more than all the dwellings of Jacob. ( Ps 87:1-2)

In the enormity of the Psalter, like the whole of the Bible, small sections are easily overlooked by the casual reader in an effort to comprehend the span of God’s story. Only when we devote ourselves to directed and purposeful study or on our fifth or sixth time through the scriptures do the small, powerful truths come to the surface. Such are the seven verses of Psalm 87. 

Two visions of the world are in view here. The Lord loves Zion, where He has chosen to make His home in the temple and become the centerpiece of their lives. His people would move toward Him in this arrangement. His Presence stayed in the Temple and worship required immediacy to that location. The psalm looks forward, however, to a time when His Presence would touch those far beyond Zion. It points to a time when Gentiles would we welcomed into the family, brothers and sisters who would acknowledge Him and cease their hostility toward Him. So it was written and so it has become.

 

Grace and peace to you..

image andrew mace–

Psalm 86–You Are Great and Do Marvelous Deeds

imageThe arrogant are attacking me, O God;

a band of ruthless men seeks my life—men without regard for you. (Psalm 86:14)

While our lives may not be at risk from our enemies, each of us can still identify with the feeling of being vulnerable to threats by others. If our faith is strong, we call out to our Father for relief. If not, we often seek our own retribution, without a thought to how the attacks fit in the grand plan of God’s history. Do we miss an opportunity to turn the other cheek?

As we read through the Psalms we are struck by how deeply rooted in ancient culture and Jewish belief this poetry is. That is, we recognize the provenance of the literature and its history but we struggle to apply the thoughts to our life. The passages that praise God and exemplify total faith in Him are not difficult to seize hold of, but in the light of our current covenant, we are ashamed to admit that we still see our enemies in the same fashion. Publicly we advocate love for them but our private musings are made up of rambling imprecatory thoughts.

The psalmist fills this prayer with stanzas of praise as he seeks relief:

You are forgiving and good, O Lord, abounding in love to all who call to you. (v5)

He is also cognizant of the ultimate outcome of history:

All the nations you have made will come and worship before you, O Lord;

They will bring glory to your name.

For you are great and do marvelous deeds; you alone are God. (vv 9-10)

Christians have and advantage that the psalmist did not; we live in the time of Jesus Christ and the new covenant. We have the end of history written for us in John’s apocalypse. We can live sacrificially toward our enemies, moving toward them rather than seeking the Lord’s hand to snatch us away from trouble. Like policeman and firefighters, we can run toward danger while others run away.

Grace and peace to you..

image klynslis